Feminist Theory & Music 9: Speaking Out of Place

Montreal, June 6-10, 2007. As a reminder, I post these conferences not so much for my academic peers but rather for the performers and listeners. This one is a good introduction to the interdisciplinary subject of feminist music theory. Note that the plenary session is on rock criticism.

The theme of this year’s conference is “Speaking Out of Place.” This topic was born from discussions of the character of Montreal as a multilingual city with a contradictory sense of itself in terms of local and national identities. It is also meant to evoke new perspectives for understanding gender in the context of transcultural and transnational conversations.

The keynote speaker will be Beverly Diamond (Memorial University of Newfoundland), noted Canadian ethnomusicologist and scholar of Inuit music. The plenary session on feminist rock criticism will feature Ann Powers, Daphne Brooks, Susan Fast, and Ellie Hisama.

Feminist Theory & Music is an international conference which has met biennially at various universities since 1991. The conference was originally the brainchild of members of the American Musicological Society who wished to involve scholars from all musical disciplines (composition, education, ethnomusicology, history, performance, and theory) in the growing field of feminist approaches to music. The conference has always been hosted and operated independently of any specific scholarly association. FTM8 was held in New York City in 2005, hosted jointly by New York University and the City University of New York. FTM9 marks the first time the conference will come to Canada.